GlobalRevolution.tv has moved from a tarp in Zucotti park to a second floor office in NoHo (North of Houston), and is being led by a former Wall Street derivatives trader, Vlad Teichberg.

On the other side of the country, Occupy Wall Street protesters are depriving the working class of their paychecks by blockading ports.

As surely as oil floats over water, and cream rises to the top of milk, it is inevitable that leaders stand out in a movement, even while they’re insisting that it’s a team effort. In this case, it’s Vlad Teichberg who has become the face of GlobalRevolution.tv.

GlobalRevolution.tv started out under a tarp in Zucotti park. After weeks of frustration due to equipment theft and fighting the elements, they made the wise business decision to seek a secure – and weatherproof – site for their budding media outlet.

They found what they needed on the second floor of a building owned by the A.J. Muste Institute. Rent is a bargain at around $400 per month. It’s no palace, but it gives them a reliable working space for their enterprise. You can get an idea of what it looks like in this video of an interview they did with CNNMoney.

The media has definitely caught on to this enterprise. Vlad has been featured with his own caricature in The New Yorker, and media from Huffington Post to the New York Times are covering their efforts. If all goes well, Vlad hopes this media enterprise will take off and provide him with the means to get a home for himself and his pregnant wife.

Contrast this organised, productive enterprise with the efforts of OWS participants on the west coast.

Although their video content is being streamed through GlobalRevolution.tv, that seems to be where the commonality ends. Rather than trying to build anything, or even be constructive, they’re attempting to block ports in Alaska and the Western U.S.

Even the unions these OWS participants claim to be supporting have come out in opposition to the blockades. They want their members to be able to go to work safely, and get a full paycheck at the end of the week.

In a recent USA Today article, one trucker was quoted as having lost $600 – a day’s wages – because the protesters succeeded in closing the port facility.

“This is joke. What are they protesting?” said Christian Vega, who sat in his truck carrying a load of recycled paper. “It only hurts me and the other drivers.

“We have jobs and families to support and feed,” he said. “Most of them don’t.”

Thomas Ryan has written an interesting post on Big Government that reveals the agenda of many OWS participants. It’s well documented with a complete archive of emails from OWS. The tone of the emails aligns with activities on the west coast, but seems quite different from the enterprise happening in New York.

OWS, protesting about inequality, is experiencing a practical lesson in reality. Every group divides out into 80% followers, 15% achievers, 4% leaders, and 1% celebrities.

In Brooklyn, Vlad Teichberg is the celebrity and his team are the leaders. The citizen journalists are the achievers, and then there are the rest – people who take action simply to feel powerful, even when it harms those they claim to be helping.

The efforts at GlobalRevolution.tv have created a channel free of advertising. It turns out that some advertisers didn’t want to be associated with the OWS channel, and rather than weed them out Livestream simply removed all advertising. That’s a huge benefit to an organization trying to communicate the OWS message.

Ustream, another online video streaming service, has provided two citizen journalists with better camera equipment. Tim Pool in New York, and Spencer Mills in Oakland, both provided consistently good content so Ustream has loaned them better video equipment.

Livestream and Ustream both claim to simply be supporting their platforms rather than specifically supporting the OWS movement. You can read more about GlobalRevolution.tv and their successes in a recent New York Times article.

The question that remains is: How long will it be before OWS participants turn on Vlad and his teammates as being part of the 1%?

It’s only a matter of time before GlobalRevolution.tv gains the attention of advertisers able to align themselves with OWS. When that happens, it’s going to become a profit-generating business. Will the 80% who have built nothing claim a share of their success?

]]>http://blogcritics.org/occupy-wall-street-stands-divided/feed/3Small Business Conquers the Corporationshttp://blogcritics.org/small-business-conquers-the-corporations/
http://blogcritics.org/small-business-conquers-the-corporations/#commentsFri, 16 Dec 2011 07:34:02 +0000Little Dudes and Divas is going head-to-head with the likes of Nordstrom, Macy’s, Babies “R” Us and even Diapers.com.

This small business does 90% of its sales through the internet and the rest through their brick-and-mortar store in Rockaway Park, N.Y. Even with the bulk of their business online, the founders of this company say their greatest strength is relationships with customers.

Steve and Susan Karasanti founded Little Dudes and Divas seven years ago. They sell clothes and accessories for infants and toddlers – everything from diapers and stroller blankets to diaper bags and car seat covers – and now have three employees. They ship around the world and are always ready to help customers find what they need.

When a call comes in from a customer wanting to know how to pack a particular bag in a certain way, the staff at Little Dudes and Divas makes a video. They walk through how to pack each item, special tips for preventing leaks or breakage, and then make it available to everyone on their site.

I spotted the Karasantis and their business in Gabriel Shaoolian’s column (You’re The Boss) in the New York Times. There are two things in particular that he’s looking at with Little Dudes and Divas – the trust factor, and reasons for buying. In addition to what I share here, you can listen to this week’s episode of Social Media: Cheap and Easy to discover the one mistake Gabriel is making that will truly make the difference between massive growth and stagnation in any business.

Competition has certainly stiffened since the company started seven years ago. Mr. Karasanti says, “It’s very hard to compete with the bigger online companies on price, but we can compete by giving our customers personal attention.”

That personal attention is a key element in business success at any time, and it’s becoming increasingly important in today’s marketplace. We’re experiencing a crisis of trust – everyone is sceptical of everything (even this statement) – and business owners are feeling the pinch.

Here are three strategies for to make your customer relationships stronger, and help your business stand out from the competition:

Show Appreciation

One of the simplest things to do is run a birthday program in your business. Simply ask customers for the month and date of their birth so you can give them special attention on their birthday.

The same thing can be done for anniversaries, customers who bring in referrals, frequent shoppers, or any other criteria you care to use. The key to all of these programs is choosing the behaviour you want to reward then building a program to reward that behaviour.

Encourage Communication

Restaurants do this all the time. I’m always spotting comment cards at the table in restaurants, and you can use the same approach in your business. All you have to do is make the cards available and give customers an anonymous way to drop them off.

Blogs and social media can be good ways to encourage communication if you actually listen and respond. As with a comment card, you have to be seen to be taking action on what people say.

Reward Referrals

Your existing customers are the easiest people to sell to, and the people they refer are the second easiest. This alone is a great reason to encourage referrals.

When someone refers another person to your business, they’re also increasing their commitment to do business with you. Now that they’ve told someone else how great you are, part of their personal credibility becomes wrapped up in continuing to do business with you. For this reason, you also want to treat referrals very well. As easy as a referral is to turn into a customer, getting it wrong just as easily means losing the referral as well as the referrer.

Another way to strengthen your customer relationship is through cross-promotion. This one takes a little bit of time and effort. It also yields multiple benefits to your business.

No one business can satisfy every need of its customers. So to help you be more important to your customers – and more appreciated by them – connect with other business owners who fulfill your customers’ needs. Whether that be a hair salon, landscaping, or dentist, the objective is to make your customer’s life easier.

For example, I know a painter who advertises on a local pizza joint’s boxes. They both serve new-movers, and this cross-promotion has paid off handsomely for both businesses.

In the case of Little Dudes and Divas, they could easily cross-promote with another shop that sells strollers and car seats. That’s an obvious one. What other businesses can you think of that would make good cross-promotion partners for Little Dudes and Divas – or for your own business?

In some cases, it’s hardly worth saying that Occupy Wall Street’s content is newsworthy. For example, the clips we’ve all seen about students being pepper sprayed at UC Davis are hardly truthful. More on that in a second.

In multiple bids to create content and keep their video streaming efforts alive, the Occupy Wall Street movement is planning several protests for the coming weeks. Do the protests they’re planning mean they’re coming up with an agenda or manifesto?

Let’s have a look at a couple of the issues occupying OWS, an Occupy Wall Street manifesto from the Los Angeles Times, and wrap up with what really happened at UC Davis.

Dec 6 – National Day of Protest – Foreclosures

As much as foreclosures are a bad thing, what exactly is OWS protesting?

Yes, all the crooked lenders, bankers, and advisors should be locked up. Sub-prime mortgages were an insane product to begin with. Offering them to people without jobs, no collateral, and no real hope of being able to carry the mortgage after renewal, was diabolical.

We won’t even get started on the issue of foreclosures due to medical debt. That’s a whole separate article.

But what about the people who accepted the sub-prime mortgages? They had to be smoking some pretty magical stuff before signing on the dotted line.

At the very least, every person currently in trouble because they accepted a sub-prime mortgage should have their butt kicked up around their shoulders.

Student Debt

Which is less reasonable:

Accepting a mortgage with no hope of repaying it

OR

Accepting the equal of a mortgage as a teenager with small prospect of repaying it

As a carpenter, I consistently advise teenagers to pursue a trade before pursuing a degree.

Becoming a tradesman takes five years – an apprenticeship. You get paid to learn, and when you choose to go to college you’ll get Life Credits for your experience. That alone can shorten the process by a full year.

Then there’s the money you earn while learning to be a tradesman. Even paying for rent and groceries is going to leave you with enough to pay for the first couple of years in college. And you’ll always have a job each summer and on weekends to keep earning money. Not a bad deal.

And you never have to worry about being out of a job. Even in an economy like this, good tradespeople are in demand. One of my clients is hiring mechanics as I write this.

OWS Manifesto

The Occupy Wall Street movement wants media attention, yet is strangely unwilling to take responsibility for the message.

In a recent article in the New York Times, Justin Wedes (a former Brooklyn science teacher who helps manage the @occupywallstnyc Twitter account) says, “We are not trying to control the message. People are getting on board with the message of the 99 percent and they are sharing their stories and we have engagement from all over the world.”

Maybe I’m missing something, but that makes OWS seem like a global pity party. Let’s all whine about how bad we have it, and maybe it’ll magically get better. You have to wonder what would happen if all the OWS activists started putting their efforts into something creative and constructive.

In an effort to give them some direction, the Los Angeles Times has published a manifesto for the Occupy Wall Street movement. Even if the movement never adopts this particular manifesto, it did a lot to help me understand what OWS might be about.

Too bad I had to learn from the LA Times instead of the people with the message.

Pepper Spray at UC Davis

As it happens, the manifesto from the LA Times also mentions the pepper spray incident at UC Davis. And I promised to come back to this.

The video is about 15 minutes long. It starts at the beginning – when police are telling protestors they must leave the area or be arrested. The video even gives you the URLs for other videos that provide additional information or other views of what happened.

When you see the whole incident, it’s interesting to watch students detaining police and refusing to allow them to leave. It’s only after repeated warnings that the police finally pepper sprayed the students in an attempt to leave.

That’s just a slightly different story than the OWS movement has put forward.

Wrapping Up

It seems the Occupy Wall Street movement has shifted its attention from protesting to staying in the limelight.

Some of the volunteers have occupied a dilapidated building in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn. They’re establishing a TV studio in the building and plan to deliver regular broadcasts to “provide real-time perspective,” says Vlad Teichber.

According to the New York Times, their ambition is to serve as the main portal for aggregating and curating video content about the movement from all over the world. How long can it be before they start asking for donations to support their efforts?

On the other hand, perhaps it will develop into a business and become the first capitalist creation of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

]]>http://blogcritics.org/occupy-wall-street-abandons-personal-responsibility/feed/46Small Business Marketing Mistake #73http://blogcritics.org/small-business-marketing-mistake-73/
http://blogcritics.org/small-business-marketing-mistake-73/#commentsSun, 04 Dec 2011 08:58:28 +0000Can you recognise good advice when it comes to you? Most small business owners don’t.

There’s an excellent demonstration of this in a recent edition of the New York Times column You’re The Boss (written by Gabriel Shaoolian).

Don Chernoff is the owner of SkyRoll.com. He recently submitted his website with the hope of increasing the response rate to a contest he is running. At publication time, he had only one entry after running the contest for months. He definitely needs some help.

The responses that came back from readers all focussed on the website. After all, the website is the vehicle for promoting the contest.

In their replies, readers indicated difficulty recognising the site as one that has something to sell. They had trouble finding the contest (on the last page of the site at the bottom). And they thought there might be a disconnect between the ideal prospect for a Sky Roll bag and the type of person willing to participate in the contest.

Unforunately, Mr. Chernoff thinks the readers missed the point. He wanted better ways to promote the contest rather than comments on how well his website promotes the contest. Ironic, isn’t it?

This is where so many business owners go wrong. They invest themselves – their self-image – in what they do, and then are unable to accept any advice about it. That advice always feels like a personal attack because they have mistakenly identified what they have created as representing their personal worth.

A recent conversation with a collision repair shop owner highlighted this for me. Let me call him Mark.

Mark asked me for input on his marketing, and especially his yellow pages ads. He was using a “standard” business card ad in the yellow page books and was (not surprisingly) unhappy with the return on his investment. So we arranged to meet, and I agreed to walk him through his options.

The first thing Mark said to me when we started the meeting was, “Just keep in mind that Direct Mail doesn’t work for my business.”

Having encountered this attitude before, I decided to let Mark qualify himself as a client. Either he would accept proof of what works and become a client, or he wouldn’t.

So I walked Mark through what Suzanne Shafer had done for her auto collision repair shop in Indianapolis. She had a 47% increase in revenues over three years – and the primary tool in achieving this was direct mail, although used in ways that Mark hadn’t considered, just as readers gave Mr. Chernoff advice for improving his site in ways that he hadn’t considered.

And just as Mr. Chernoff thinks “everyone else” is missing the point, Mark finished our meeting by telling me that direct mail wouldn’t work for his business. Oh sure, it was great for an auto collision center in Indianapolis but it wouldn’t work in Chicago. And Suzanne’s was a family-owned business, unlike Mark’s which is only a family-owned business (yes, just like Suzanne’s). Although Mark’s does have the “disadvantage” of being located in the same buildng as his brother’s auto repair shop.

It’s a mistake that’s far more common than you might imagine. And while you’re laughing at the silliness of Mark and Mr. Chernoff, keep in mind there’s a good chance you’re making the same mistake.

This is one that’s particularly difficult to spot because of our natural inclination to be consistent, and to remain committed to our choices. Especially when we invest our self into what we’re doing.

Fortuantely, there are three simple things we can do to avoid this small business marketing mistake.

1. Recognise it really isn’t your fault.

That’s an easy thing to say – almost trite – so let’s take a look at why it isn’t your fault.

Most of the marketing advice you get is extremely biased. Yellow pages, newspaper, and other media reps (including ad agencies) are compensated based on how much you spend. So their incentive is to increase your transaction value, and they have little concern for your return on investment. As a result, they focus on selling techniques for themselves rather than effective marketing for you.

Yes it’s short-sighted, but it’s true.

2. Understand your choices are separate from who you are.

We’ve all had friends who made poor choices because they got bad advice, right? And we always tell them it’s not their fault. They trusted someone to give them good advice.

Business owners trust ad agencies and other media reps to give them good advice. So when you act on the advice you’re given, or what is popularly taught by the gurus and experts, you’re acting in good faith. It’s the media reps and gurus who have reason to be ashamed.

3. Listen to proof rather than opinion.

Proof is the return on investment that can be demonstrated. A business owner invests one dollar into a specific marketing channel and receives more than one dollar in return. That’s good marketing.

When anyone avoids talking about specific numbers, you should avoid talking with them.

Small business marketing is an investment. Most business owners treat it as an expense because that’s all they’ve ever been shown. Now you know better.

The question is: Do you recognise the good advice you’ve just received?

]]>http://blogcritics.org/small-business-marketing-mistake-73/feed/080,000 Helped Provide Overseas Soldiers with Free Phone Calls Homehttp://blogcritics.org/80000-helped-provide-overseas-soldiers-with/
http://blogcritics.org/80000-helped-provide-overseas-soldiers-with/#commentsTue, 16 Feb 2010 06:11:10 +0000There are millions who want to speak to their soldier husband, wife, son or daughter. For some, it’s simply the desire to speak to mommy or daddy.

For many, Valentine’s Day 2010 came and went without that telephone call. The young men and women serving overseas – American soldiers – couldn’t afford the long distance charges to call home. But Operation Valentine’s Connection made a difference, and you can, too.

Operation Valentine’s Connection was a special effort by the folks at Free Phone Calls for Soldiers to connect soldiers with their loved ones for Valentine’s Day.

Free Phone Calls for Soldiers is a Facebook Cause founded by Patrick Ayres and Larry Thorpe. They launched the effort while serving in South Korea after finding they weren’t the only soldiers feeling lonely and disconnected.

Patrick enlisted in January of 2008. He trained as a Combat Medic and served in South Korea. He is currently stationed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Larry joined the Army in July 2007. He served for two years as a Cannon Crew Member and was stationed in South Korea with a field artillery unit. Today, he is serving with the National Guard and working to support his fellow soldiers.

Operation Valentine’s Connection is a special fundraising effort organized by Andrew Ballenthin (President, SolSolutions and Founder of the Blog Off Competitions). To connect with their audience of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and supporters of US troops overseas, Andrew created a mini-e-book titled Operation Valentines Connection, filled with the stories of wives, husbands, fiancés, and other family members of US troops. Reading these stories will touch your heart, and show you what it’s costing families.

Amanda A. wrote, “My husband is serving in Afghanistan right now. We spend boatloads of money for him to call home. Some months, we can't afford it.

“When I don't hear from him, it's really rough on both of us. I need to know he is safe, and he needs to know that we're all ok here.

“They worry about us too, and they don't need to while they are over there. Calling home allows him to keep his mind on his job, so he can come home safe.”

You’ll read a story about Jenny’s brother: “My Brother is serving in Afghanistan right now. This week 2 soldiers in his regiment were killed, he can't talk about that but he can reassure his family he’s ok.

"My brother can listen to our voices and have a little peice [sic] of mind and comfort for a few minutes, is that to [sic] much to ask?”

It’s amazing how big a difference you and I can make. Imagine each of the 1.5 million members giving just a dollar. You’ll be sacrificing a cuppa-joe so some G.I. Joe can call his mom, her husband, or their child.

“My hubby is currently deployed and hearing from him on the phone is something that keeps me going. He was unable to see his first child be born because he is deployed. Phone cards add up quickly…let alone trying to do every day things with out [sic] our loved one.

“Even though our little one is only 3 months old he knows his Daddy's voice & smiles every time he calls home. I am so thankful for all that our soldiers do & wish they would give back to them & let them call home for FREE!!!”

Valentine’s Day has come and gone, and Operation Valentine's Connection is over for this year. The next item on their menu is for Andrew to organize and host a G.I. Blog Off Competition. You’ll be able to “hear” from the G.I.s and their families for yourself.

]]>http://blogcritics.org/80000-helped-provide-overseas-soldiers-with/feed/0Social Media Development — Three Case Studies, Part 3 of 4http://blogcritics.org/social-media-development-mdash-three-case1/
http://blogcritics.org/social-media-development-mdash-three-case1/#commentsMon, 08 Feb 2010 11:03:57 +0000Sam Diener is the second case study in this series. He also placed second in the Blog Off competition. As I mentioned in the introduction to the series, what caught my attention about these three examples of success in social media is the difference in their background.

We saw in part two that Sean Nelson is experienced in professional sales and owns two successful insurance businesses. In the next article, we’ll look at Tim Ruffner and see his background in the prototyping industry.

Sam Diener is unique in this group of top performers partly because he is just 25 years old. It’s easy to suppose that someone at that age is lacking in business acumen, but Sam’s success with social media proves otherwise.

Sam graduated summa cum laude from the University of Maryland – Baltimore County as a paramedic. After working in his field for almost three years, Sam moved over to a position as Manager with Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Less than 2 years later, Sam was downsized out of a job in July 2009.

That’s when Sam took a look at social media. By December 2009 – when Sam entered the Blog Off competition – he had built a global audience of 40,000+ with his blog.

As a result of the time and energy Sam has invested into his blog and other social media efforts, he is now being approached by prospects to consult on their campaign architecture and learn business social skills. Sam uses his experience and training from Enterprise to improve the sales process, and his knowledge of social media to increase customer retention for his clients.

Sam is even in negotiations with a firm from St. Louis to fly there and work with them on their social media campaign. He has a unique, humorous and interesting approach to applying business social skills that appeals to clients and readers alike.

One of the things Sam has done to increase the visibility and credibility of his blogging efforts is to get high quality sponsors for his blog. He went to three universities to get their sponsorship:

His alma mater, UMBC

San Diego State University

Ball State University

Rather than approaching these bodies asking for a financial sponsorship, Sam contacted their business departments. His approach was to ask the professors to review his blog and tell him whether the content is useful to their students. Because of his writing style and the usefulness of his content, all three universities agreed to provide a link to Sam’s blog.

You can see how that allows Sam to borrow credibility from the universities for anyone arriving at his site. It also gives him direct access to the student body of all three business departments because his blog is now being directly promoted to them by the professors.

Sam started the Stuff For Success blog precisely because he was “seeking a new opportunity in creative marketing or business development.” So building a blog that has had over 40,000 page views by people in 91 countries is an ideal way for Sam to showcase his ability. That he achieved that success in less than four months is outstanding and spectacular.

Stuff for Success is the center of Sam’s social media efforts. He is also on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, and the location to which he drives traffic from those sites is his blog.

It’s an important point because I firmly believe any business wanting to make the best use of social media should make a blog their primary business site. A blog provides all the flexibility and function of a traditional portal site while adding innate SEO value and the powerful functionality of plugins.

When you look at Stuff for Success, you see the menu bar across the top of the page. As with any portal site, this menu bar can easily have drop-down menus that access multiple pages. However, with a static portal site, adding pages or updating them means having to make the additions or changes manually.

Using a blog allows you to add a page simply by creating a new post. When you have information to add to a page, you can drop it in by writing a comment or by editing the original page content. Whereas updating a portal site means having to transfer files using FTP, updating a blog is as simple as writing in MS Word.

You can also see that Sam has his social media profiles prominently displayed on the Stuff for Success blog. The exact same thing can be done on a portal site, but most of us would have some difficulty getting it done. Sam was able to build his entire blog in a week using the Thesis theme for WordPress and a bunch of free plugins. (Keep in mind that Sam has no background or education in computers.)

There is no blogging platform that is easier to use and more flexible than WordPress. With the addition of plugins, the WordPress platform becomes unbeatable. By the way, a plugin is a program that is written by a WordPress enthusiast to perform a specific function on your blog.

For example, there is a plugin that optimizes each post for SEO. It’s called the SEO Pack. The great thing about all plugins is that WordPress keeps a library of them, and they’re rated by all the users. When you see a plugin with 4 or 5 stars, you know people are using it and are happy with it.

All the top rated plugins are supported and updated by their creators. WordPress even notifies you automatically when an update is available for any of your plugins.

For Sam’s blog, plugins allow him to include most of the features down the right side of his pages. They help him optimize posts, track visitors to his blog, and show visitors which of his posts are most popular.

Check in again for the last installment in this series. We’ll enter the thrilling world of “direct metal laser sintering” and discover how Tim Ruffner turned that into an engaging and comment generating topic.

]]>http://blogcritics.org/social-media-development-mdash-three-case1/feed/0Social Media Development — Three Case Studies, Part 2 of 4http://blogcritics.org/social-media-development-three-case-studies1/
http://blogcritics.org/social-media-development-three-case-studies1/#commentsFri, 29 Jan 2010 00:25:20 +0000Social media can do more than just help your business. In this case, it has replaced two successful businesses.

Sean Nelson started taking social media seriously in December of 2007 when a LinkedIn member connected to him and eventually referred business that generated approximately $25,000 a year. Two years later, in January 2010, Sean has “sold out” from his other corporate interests to work in social media full-time, helping businesses plan and implement social media strategies.

And just because it’s called “social” media doesn’t mean Sean is working for free. Sean is a partner with SONARConnects (a full service advertising and marketing firm in Atlanta, GA), leads social media workshops throughout the U.S., and is the author of three books about LinkedIn and how to use it. Sean also writes the Social Media Sonar blog.

While Sean uses other sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and his blog to communicate with others, LinkedIn still is a primary key because it allows him to connect to other business professionals. What started as a LinkedIn strategy has evolved to a complete social media strategy, but it all started with LinkedIn.

To achieve his success on LinkedIn, Sean has followed a simple five-step process:

Define your purpose

Create an optimized profile

Expand your reach on LinkedIn

Build Credibility

Communicate Continuously

Let’s have a look at what Sean did for each of those five steps to achieve his social media success.

Define Your PurposeThe key to success with any business venture is having a strategy. Ready. Fire. Aim. Put a strategy together, take action, and make course corrections as you go.

In the case of LinkedIn, Sean had two aspects to his strategy:

He wanted to grow his business (i.e., make a profit)

He wanted to help other business owners do the same thing

When you develop your own strategy for using social media, be sure to include definite objectives. For example, you want to increase profit, but how do you plan to do that? You might choose to look for joint venture partners and explore new business opportunities in your industry. Another approach is to build an audience for your product/service as a means to enlarging your customer base.

By deciding what is you want to do with social media, you are giving yourself the means to measure your success.

Create an Optimized ProfileBe sure to complete your profile on every social media site you join. Twitter has an incredibly short profile so it’s easy to complete, while LinkedIn, Plaxo and Ecademy have more involved profile systems.

Your profile is your primary means, and opportunity, for communicating with people on the site. When they discover you, this is your first impression. Be sure it’s a good one.

In particular, be sure you have a good profile photo. Make it a real photo of you in a situation that reflects your business. The photo I use for all my profiles was taken on the Toronto Islands with a children’s jungle gym and park visible over my shoulder. That fits with my outdoor lifestyle, and passion for the environment. I’m dressed in a golf shirt and am smiling. The clothing is appropriate to me being a writer, and the smile is how I like to greet people. There’s a jungle gym in the background because I value taking time to play and relax.

Make sure you have your photo formatted so it is square. An oblong photo (4×6, 3×5) is going to be distorted by most social media sites. And have it formatted so it’s small – 80 x 80 is a good size.

Another element of optimizing your profile is using words that are common to your industry: keywords. Profiles are Web pages and that means they’re indexed by search engines. Putting keywords into your profile increases how often you get found through organic search.

Expand Your Reach on LinkedInYou expand your reach by making direct connections and by participating in the community. That’s true for every social media site. Join groups on a site that are related to your industry and your interests. It’s important in social media to show there’s more to you than work and business. For example, I show my photography on Facebook. Social media is relationship marketing. People want to know you as a person.

Build CredibilityLinkedIn allows you to build credibility quickly by answering questions on the site. Anyone can post a question, and they get to choose who gives the best answer. Obviously, being picked for having the best answer is a great credibility builder.

You also want to give links to articles you write, interviews you do, and events you’re attending so people see you’re active in your industry. Simply write a status update and use a bit.ly link to connect readers with more information.

Your credibility is the key factor in being able to do business with other members.

Actively ask other members to comment on your articles and blog posts. When a site provides a recommendation feature (LinkedIn does this), make a point of asking clients for recommendations. Post links to video or text testimonials, and be sure to update the community on things you have accomplished.

Communicate ContinuouslyFrom the time you join a site until you decide to retire, you need to communicate with the other members.

Imagine a social media site as a convention. It runs 24 hours a day and 365 days of the year. If you attend the convention, but never speak a word, how will anyone know you are there? There’s far too much conversation, development and interaction happening for anyone to spontaneously be attracted to your silence.

Wherever possible, respond to people’s questions, comment on their status updates, post your own status updates, make presentations and write articles. Be involved in your community.

And none of this needs to be “original” content. What I mean is that anything you write for your own blog, a local newspaper, or a trade journal is the kind of thing you want to tell members of the online community about. The content you provide can, and should be, reproduced (or re-used) from other places.

Wrapping it UpIn Sean’s case, expanding his reach, building his credibility, and communicating with his community resulted in first place in Blog Off II. During the competition, Sean achieved:

5,157 views of his posts

4.5 minutes average reading time, and

93 comments

NOTE: These statistics are the final, weighted results.

These results came from leveraging the audience Sean has built. The ability to leverage that audience — being able to ask for their support and participation — comes from having developed a relationship with the audience members.

You can see a video of Sean on Thrive America where he describes his five-step process. I suggest watching the video because it gives depth and personality to Sean, and enhances the value you get from this article.

Sean is the first of the three case studies being presented in this article series. Sam Diener is next, and he is followed by Tim Ruffner. You can read the introduction to the series here.

What are you doing to achieve success with social media? Have you developed your strategy and decided which sites to use? Share your thoughts and plans here and I'll help you refine your strategy.

]]>http://blogcritics.org/social-media-development-three-case-studies1/feed/2The Waltons Invented Social Mediahttp://blogcritics.org/the-waltons-invented-social-media/
http://blogcritics.org/the-waltons-invented-social-media/#commentsMon, 25 Jan 2010 08:20:41 +0000Anyone who has seen an episode of the Waltons knows the depth at which relationships motivate us. They never sold a product, didn’t have a board game or action figures, and there are probably two generations that have never seen the television show. But sure as John-boy narrated the program, the Waltons are the defining figure for social media.

I remember everyone gathering to watch the show. The next day in school, it wasn’t so much the thing we would talk about…it was what we wanted to be. Everyone wanted to live on Waltons' mountain, to have their grandma and grandpa close by, and be surrounded by the warmth and hustle of a big family.

Can’t you just hear Grandpa Walton giving the same advice to one of the kids starting a new business venture?

Folks, I’ve been saying it since I started writing Friends, Follower and Customer Evangelists…The only thing truly different about social media is the bells and whistles.

Mitch Joel takes the same kind of approach in his new book Six Pixels of Separation. He even has a section called "In Praise of Slow." Why? Because he recognises that social media is nothing more than a primped and coiffed version of word-of-mouth.

When United Airlines trashed Dave Carroll’s guitar, the story would have been a flash on the social media landscape if not for his songs. Sure the story caught our attention. But Dave Carroll held it by delivering something of value and interest to us – meaningful songs. (Not to mention humorous videos to go with them.)

How is it that the experts and gurus can equate social media with relationship marketing and not realize they are talking about something as old as commerce itself? Customer evangelism is when someone sails from Europe to the New World and looks up a business owner holding a three-year-old letter saying “My friend says you hold to an honest deal.”

Social media just turns the three years into nano-seconds.

Do well by a customer and they can communicate that with lightning speed. So, too, if you do poorly. And a reputation still takes time to build.

For everyone you know who is just getting started with social media, two excellent places to get ongoing information for everyone, and especially those new to social media, are ProBlogger and Social Media Examiner.

Darren Rowse runs ProBlogger and Michael Stelzner runs Social Media Examiner. I’m familiar with both men and readily recommend their content.

A great person to follow for metrics and measuring social media marketing results is Andrew Ballenthin. He’s doing great stuff with his Blog Off competitions. Andrew is very big on walking his talk so look him up at the Community Marketing Blog.

Remember that social media is a tool and not a magic wand.

Dave Carroll still had to write and record the songs then shoot the videos. And before that he had spent years developing a loyal fan base. Just like the Waltons spent years showing us how relationships work just so I could use them as an example in this article.

]]>http://blogcritics.org/the-waltons-invented-social-media/feed/8Social Media Development — Three Case Studies, Part 1 of 4http://blogcritics.org/social-media-development-mdash-three-case/
http://blogcritics.org/social-media-development-mdash-three-case/#commentsTue, 19 Jan 2010 09:31:32 +0000Sean Nelson, Sam Diener and Tim Ruffner are actively, and successfully, using social media to build their businesses. Sean has prospered well enough in social media that he is “retiring” from two corporate interests to help other business owners use social media well. Sam has built a global audience of 40,000+ with his blog, and Tim is showing people how to make their dreams into reality. And each of them recognizes that a blog is the center of their social media strategy.

They’re also the top three performers in Blog Off II, a semi-annual competition organized by Andrew Ballenthin to demonstrate social media ROI (return on investment). It’s also an opportunity for bloggers – such as Sean, Sam and Tim – to walk their talk.

What caught my attention about the results from Blog Off II is that Tim, Sam and Sean come from extremely different backgrounds.

Sean is a sales professional, and came first in Blog Off II. He owns two successful companies in the insurance industry and has made a career by consistently, honestly helping business owners get what they need. It’s no wonder he has been able to make a smooth and profitable transition to social media.

Sean publishes the Social Media Sonar blog, has written three books on how to use LinkedIn, and has been teaching business owners how to duplicate his success for two years.

Sam placed second in Blog Off II, has trained as a paramedic and was working as a manager in the car rental industry before turning to social media. He now publishes the Stuff For Success blog – with his own unique blend of humor and usefulness.

Sam started the Stuff For Success precisely because he is “seeking a new opportunity in creative marketing or business development.” So building a blog that had over 40,000 page views by people in 91 countries is ideal way for Sam to showcase his ability. That he achieved that success in less than four months is outstanding and spectacular.

It also means a return to the corporate world is looking less and less likely. Sam’s blog is turning into a full-time, profitable business.

Tim works with a process called direct metal laser sintering. That’s also the name of his blogspot blog. You just have to agree that Tim has a niche market.

It gets a lot easier to understand when you know Tim is an account executive with GPI Prototype. Tim makes scale models of anything you want to show to clients, or even working prototypes of inventions. And that is what lead Tim to social media.

It’s a fair bet that none of us care much about direct metal laser sintering. But how many of us like to tinker with things, and have an idea or two for a great invention? Maybe we’re going to improve the Swiffer duster, or invent a new Slinky. Which would be why Tim’s Blog Off II articles centered around what a prototype is and how to bring your invention to market.

“Bringing your invention to market” is an evergreen topic. There are inventors and tinkerers in every household, in every generation. I’ll bet you know half a dozen people whose interest would tweak when you tell them about Tim’s blog – someone who works in the invention business giving away how-to advice for getting patents and making prototypes.

A prototype maker, car rental agent, and insurance salesmen…hardly the first things that come to mind when you think of social media professionals. Which is exactly why they’re valuable as case studies – they show that social media works for every business.

It’s also why you need to be telling every business colleague you know who isn’t currently using social media that they need to seriously, critically look at social media as a business building tool. To help you give them the evidence they need, the next three articles in this series will look at Sean, Sam and Tim individually.

We’ll explore what they did to be successful in social media. Then you can put their methods to use for yourself, and encourage your colleagues to follow suit.

]]>http://blogcritics.org/social-media-development-mdash-three-case/feed/1Social Media ROI Is For Professionals Onlyhttp://blogcritics.org/social-media-roi-is-for-professionals/
http://blogcritics.org/social-media-roi-is-for-professionals/#commentsMon, 04 Jan 2010 08:09:42 +0000How often have you heard someone talking about social media without mentioning results? Or maybe you’ve asked your consultant about ROI (return on investment) metrics only to hear that they haven’t been developed for social media yet.

Business owners want to know the time and energy they are putting into social media is going to bring a return on investment (ROI). A lot of self-proclaimed experts and gurus want us to believe the metrics we need don’t exist yet. But that isn’t true. What doesn’t exist is their ability to produce results.

Andrew Ballenthin has demonstrated that social media can indeed give an ROI, and which metrics count in measuring it.

Andrew says, "The most important part is knowing what you want to measure before you begin. Social media is new, but the results businesses are after are the same — prospects, customers, and sales. If you know what you want to measure, the methods already exist."

Whether they make two posts or 20, these are the criteria competitors are judged on. And the results are impressive. The competitors achieved over 27,700 page views, 110 posts, 1,262 new comments (which demonstrated not just volume but quality of engagement), and a page visit time of two to six minutes.

And look at the metrics being measured. There’s nothing here that you aren’t already measuring for any website you have. And it’s a fair bet that any other metric you want to name is already being measured in traditional media. Making the leap to social media isn’t all that difficult.

How do you measure customer satisfaction? Some business owners engage customers in conversation. Competitors from Blog-Off II have shown you can engage people in conversations through your blog. The key to being successful at it is talking about something that interests your audience.

I can guarantee your audience is not interested in “Can you give me your opinion on issue XYZ?” Really, how often do you talk to people like that?

Instead, give your opinion – and give it strongly. Take a stand that something is the best, or the worst, and you’ll get people commenting. Some of them will argue with you and that’s a good thing. They’re giving you an opportunity to defend your position, showcase your expertise in the process, and stimulate more questions and comments.

One thing to keep in mind for social media is that it isn’t a marketing channel. Even when someone joins your fan page on Facebook, they still don’t want to receive marketing messages from you there. Again, they want you to talk about what interests them.

A great example is TripAdvisor’s “More Than Footprints” campaign. They involved their audience in voting for how TripAdvisor would distribute $1 million across five non-profit organizations. Without any direct response advertising, TripAdvisor increased membership by 500,000, improved their brand appeal, and got a wagon-load of press coverage.

Would you like to be sure your social media efforts will bring you an ROI? Then I strongly suggest you give some attention to Andrew, the team he has assembled, and the Blog-Off events he will continue to run. A primary objective for Andrew is demonstrating that social media ROI can be measured, and how to do it.

Tuesday, January 5, from 12:30 to 1:00 pm (EST), Andrew and the top three competitors from Blog-Off II will be discussing their results on ThatChannel. They will be explaining why the event was important to them, and what the results mean. You can catch them again Monday, January 11 from 12:30 to 1:45 pm (EST) on Jon Hansen’s PI Window on Business, and watch their social media efforts on the Community Marketing Blog.